The Finishing School (5 page)

Melanie turned back to the room. They were entitled to search anything in plain view, incident to what was, if nothing else, a lawful arrest on immigration charges. Unfortunately, the only things she saw were a gruesome painting of Christ on the cross, a table with a half-eaten breakfast of cold tortillas, and a squat, prune-faced
abuela
in a shapeless polyester dress.

The old lady glared at Melanie. “Why you bother my Juan Carlos? He no sell drugs. He good boy.”

If there was one thing marriage had taught Melanie, it was that you could live with a person for years and still not have a clue what they were up to.

“Well, if he’s such an altar boy,” she replied, “why did he just jump out the window?”

MELANIE RUSHED INTO the big conference room carrying her Starbucks and muffin, only to find she was stressing out for nothing. Ten past nine, and nobody else had arrived yet. Ray-Ray Wong must still be where she’d left him fifteen minutes earlier, when she decided she couldn’t possibly survive this meeting without caffeine—sitting in one of the interview rooms on the sixth floor with Juan Carlos Peralta. Peralta had signed a waiver of speedy arraignment and agreed to talk. And they had plenty to ask him about, starting with the twelve glassines of heroin found stuffed in his sock at the time of his arrest. That would be the first order of business as soon as the meeting ended.

Much as Melanie sympathized with Luis Reyes, maybe this whole thing was cut-and-dried, after all. She didn’t want to believe it. Carmen had looked so sweet in that picture, and Melanie couldn’t help identifying with her.
La raza
and all that, being a poor girl in a rich kids’ school. But facts were facts. Carmen’s boyfriend was undeniably a heroin dealer. Carmen wanted to hang with the cool girls, and she’d found the ticket. It made sense.

The second Melanie dropped into a chair, it hit her how much she missed that little
niña
at home. Maya would’ve woken up by now and found her mommy gone. Melanie glanced around the empty room, then jumped up and hastily dialed her house from the telephone on the credenza. Sandy Robinson, her baby-sitter, reported that Steve had just left and that Maya’s fever was down. The medication was working this time,
gracias a Dios
. Sandy held the receiver up to Maya’s ear, and Melanie talked baby talk into the phone. Bernadette glided in, caught her doing that, and looked at her like she was crazy. People with no kids didn’t get it. Or maybe it was just that Bernadette didn’t. Melanie hung up fast and took her seat before she got yelled at.

Bernadette was even more heavily made up than usual, wearing a tight crimson pantsuit with gold buttons that matched her brightly colored hair and showed off her chest. She sat at the head of the table.

“So, what do you think?” she asked. “Great color for TV, right?”

“You’ll stand out,” Melanie said diplomatically.

“You, on the other hand, look like something the cat dragged in.”

“Gee, thanks. Maybe you forgot, but I’ve been up all night.”

“Honestly, girlfriend, one late night and you’re toast. It takes stamina to play with the big kids.”

Ray-Ray Wong strode in and shook hands with Bernadette.

“By the way, two new agents are coming to this meeting,” Bernadette said as Ray sat down next to Melanie. “Vito and I agreed it’s worth staffing up so we can resolve this case quickly. One is a detective named Bridget Mulqueen, who’s on your squad already, I understand, Ray-Ray.”

“Jeez Louise! Not Gidget!” he exclaimed.

“That’s more emotion than I’ve seen from you since we met, Ray,” Melanie said. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nepotism hire,” he muttered.

“Oh, come on, that’s an exaggeration,” Bernadette said.

Ray-Ray fixed her with a withering stare.

“All
right
, maybe,” Bernadette conceded after a moment. Melanie was impressed. Not everybody could stare down Bernadette.

“Her one previous assignment was IAB,” Ray-Ray said, “and
they
wouldn’t even keep her. We got her because the lieutenant owed Jimmy Mulqueen a favor. This chick is wicked connected.”

“Bridget does happen to come from a family that has quite a few members on the job, including Deputy Commissioner Mulqueen,” Bernadette conceded.

“Who’s her father,” Ray-Ray put in.

“If you want to be the one to tell him his little girl isn’t good enough for this case, be my guest. There’s a nice traffic post in Queens that needs filling. You want my advice, keep your mouth shut and give her some rap sheets to run. Meanwhile, I’m making it up to you with the other new team member.”

“Who’s that?” Melanie asked, taking a sip of her Starbucks.

“You’ve worked with him before, Melanie. Dan O’Reilly from the FBI.”

Ray-Ray and Bernadette both stared at her as she choked on her coffee, turning bright red, unable to catch her breath.

OF COURSE, Dan had always taken her breath away, from the very second they met. But that was something she’d been trying to put out of her mind.

The phone on the credenza rang, and Bernadette got up to answer it. Ray-Ray turned to Melanie, who was still wheezing.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“Yuh,” she managed through her choking fit.

“This guy incompetent, too?”

“No, no. He’s very good. It’s just…” She trailed off into another round of hacking.

Ray-Ray nodded as if he understood. “Got it. Hate the fuckin’ Feebs myself. I was hoping they were off narcotics permanently, post-9/11, but now they sleazed their way back in with this narcoterrorism BS.”

Bernadette returned to the conference table.

“Okay,” she said, sitting down, “they’re here. They’ll be up in a minute.”

A
minute
? Melanie was nearly hyperventilating. Bernadette couldn’t know what she’d done by assigning Dan O’Reilly to this case. In fact, her boss probably thought she was doing Melanie a favor, had doubtless handpicked Dan precisely because she thought he and Melanie worked well together. What a disaster! Little did Bernadette know.

It was months since the two of them had seen each other, but Melanie still had it bad for this man. The second they met, she’d felt like something big was going to happen between them. And it started to, but then it got all mucked up. She sobbed herself to sleep some nights, regretting that she’d ever let him go, longing for him, wondering if she should try to call. Here she was divorcing Steve, the father of her child, and yes, she was sad about that. But it was Dan she cried for. And the worst part was, it was her own fault.

DAN HAD ARRIVED before the baby-sitter. It was their first real date, and he brought her flowers. Melanie took them, nodding her thanks, then put them down distractedly on the hall table. She was on the phone with the pediatrician, still in her bathrobe with hair wet from the shower. Maya was in her arms, burning with fever. Her ears again, the third time in a month. She screamed so loudly that Melanie could barely hear the doctor on the other end of the line
.

“Sorry,” Melanie mouthed to Dan. “What can I do, Doctor? Please, she’s really bad right now.” Watching her daughter suffer, Melanie felt more helpless than she ever had in her life. Dan’s presence, which she’d been so looking forward to, now seemed like an unwelcome distraction.

“I don’t like to do it, but I’ll phone in a stronger antibiotic tomorrow. Give her the Motrin and the ear drops, and bring her in in the morning,” the doctor said.

Melanie hung up and turned to Dan, meeting his eyes desperately over Maya’s writhing body.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, “but I can’t go out. I already sent the sitter home.”

His face fell. “I’m so disappointed. I made a reservation at a real nice place. Italian—”

Maya wailed even louder, causing Melanie’s blood pressure to skyrocket. Melanie was about to lose it, big time. Amazing, the physiological impact of your child’s cries.

“This isn’t a good time,” she snapped. “You should just leave.”

From the expression on his face, you’d think she’d punched him. Okay, maybe her tone was a little harsh, but didn’t he understand that Maya had to come first? What kind of mother would she be if she left Maya sick with the baby-sitter so she could go on a
date?

“Isn’t there some way we can work this out?” Dan said. “Maybe we just go for a quick bite to—”

“You’re not listening. Don’t you see how bad she feels? How can you ask me to leave her?”

“You want to postpone till tomorrow night?”

Melanie put her hand on Maya’s forehead. The poor little thing was burning up. “I can’t make any plans,” Melanie said flatly.

“Ever?” He was beginning to sound annoyed, which in turn annoyed Melanie.

“I don’t know. Don’t pressure me.”

Dan’s eyes flashed with anger. “I’m not pressuring anybody. You don’t feel the same way I do, fine. I can take a hint.”

“
Dan, I have responsibilities you don’t! I have to put my daughter first. It’s not
about
you and me. I don’t have room to fall in love right now
.”

HE’D WALKED OUT, and that was the last she’d heard from him. Oh, she’d left messages, at first trying to make light of the situation, later apologizing profusely. But he’d never called back, so eventually she gave up. She had her pride. Now that she was about to see him again after so many months when he’d loomed large in her mind, she had to remind herself that nothing had changed. Underneath that all-American face, behind those crystalline blue eyes and easy smile, Dan O’Reilly was still a person of tremendous volatility. He wanted everything from her, wouldn’t settle for less, refused to compromise. If they had to work together, Melanie told herself, she’d better keep a safe distance. Or else she risked losing her balance completely.

She tried to pay attention to what Bernadette was saying.

“—upside of a big group in front of the cameras is, it looks like we’re devoting resources.”

“My personal opinion, ma’am. We could be getting real work done, instead of standing there like window dressing. We made an arrest this morning, and I for one would prefer to continue debriefing the prisoner,” Ray-Ray said.

“
What
? An arrest? Why didn’t you tell me this, Melanie?” Bernadette said.

“I paged you, but I never got a callback,” Melanie said. Which was true.

“So who authorized you to intake the arrest, miss?”

“Joe Williams. He’s acting deputy chief with Susan on vacation, right?”

Bernadette crossed her arms and opened her mouth to say something nasty. Melanie knew she’d done nothing wrong, but that never stopped Bernadette from reaming her out—especially in front of people, which was one of Bernadette’s favorite pastimes. Luckily, just then Lieutenant Albano strode into the room, wearing a satin Yankees jacket and trailed by a young woman carrying a tall stack of three-ring binders. Presumably Bridget Mulqueen. Melanie looked past her at the open door, but Dan was nowhere in sight. Bridget dumped the binders onto the conference table so haphazardly that their contents flew out and scattered everywhere.

“Evidence. Who needs it?” Ray-Ray said, deadpan, rocking back and forth in his chair.

Bridget threw him a nasty look as she bent down to clean up. “Everything I do, this one has to make a remark. Like you never dropped anything, knucklehead?”

Ray-Ray just smirked at her. Bridget looked like somebody’s bratty kid sister—mid-twenties, maybe, with short, scruffy blond hair, a pixieish face, and a flat-chested, powerfully haunched jock bod. She wore jeans and a down vest. Melanie felt sorry for the kid and thought about getting up to help her, but she just couldn’t muster the energy.

Albano walked up to Bernadette and pumped her hand warmly. “I haven’t seen you since…what? Fort Worth a couple years back on that Juarez cartel thing? You’re lookin’ good, lookin’ good.”

“Great to see you, too, Vito. I want you to know I’m very grateful that you brought us this case. We’ll justify your confidence in us, promise.”

“Make sure you give it your personal attention, huh, hon?” He winked at her.

“Absolutely. I just
know
this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.”

Bernadette smiled flirtatiously and winked back. Sex appeal was a perfectly legitimate tool for bringing in business as far as she was concerned. She’d even advised Melanie to dress sexier and keep a fresh box of doughnuts on her desk to attract the cops, and much as Melanie tried to laugh off the heavy-handed tactics, she had to admit they worked. There were so many prosecutors’ offices vying for the good cases in New York City—state, federal, special task forces, all divided up into different districts and boroughs with overlapping jurisdictions—that it took somebody with elbows as sharp as Bernadette’s to keep them at the forefront.

Melanie continued to watch the door. Where was Dan? Did she hallucinate Bernadette saying his name?

Then, suddenly, he was standing there, and she wasn’t ready for him. She probably never would be.

DAN O’REILLY WAS OUT running on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk at 6:00 A.M. when his pager went off. He decided to ignore it till he finished the route, despite the 811 after the callback number. The 811 code meant urgent; 911 you only used in life-or-death situations. But his boss was a little too free with the 811s, and Dan didn’t like to cut short his run for some bogus emergency. It was five below with the windchill and pitch-dark out, but still he stuck to his routine. That was how he kept going in life. He didn’t believe in sparing himself for weather, although he did let his dog sleep in today. Guinness was getting old. Poor guy’s paws couldn’t take the salt on the roads.

The pager went off twice more before he finally gave in and headed back.

Five minutes later he walked through the green door of the 100th Precinct building, told the girl behind the desk he was with the Bureau, and asked to use the phone.